Do you think 300-sq feet would be enough for you? — tanya b.

wnyc:

New York City apartments may get even smaller. Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Monday launched a competition for developers to design a building with micro-units of no more than 300-square feet in Manhattan for the city’s expanding small-household population.

More on WNYC News Blog | Brian Lehrer Asks: What’s the Smallest Apartment You’ve Ever Had?

tballardbrown:

In sworn court testimony, she described watching loan officers comb through heavily African American areas such as Baltimore and Prince George’s County, forging relationships with churches and community groups to sell their members shoddy mortgages. She says she processed loans for homeowners with sterling credit ratings with higher interest rates than they needed to pay. And she says she pumped out millions of dollars in mortgages to people with no paperwork and low incomes, becoming Wells Fargo’s top-producing loan officer.

(via Ex-loan officer claims Wells Fargo targeted black communities for shoddy loans - The Washington Post)

Photo: Michael Williamson / Washington Post

The decline in young home owners is a puzzling trend. Interest rates have steadily declined over the last 30 years. Mortgage lending has loosened. Women have ascended in the workplace and supplemented their spouse’s earnings. How in the face of all of these positive developments did home ownership among the young keep falling?

— Derek Thompson, “The End of Ownership: Why Aren’t Young People Buying More Houses?” (via theatlantic)

shortformblog got this up before we did, so let’s just reblog them.

shortformblog:

Homeowners might feel good about the optimism Freddie Mac has bestowed in their abilities.

Experts say the Great Recession is erasing slow but steady economic gains made by blacks in recent decades. The foreclosure crisis is having a particularly devastating impact, they say, erasing years of racial progress. (via Racial Gap In Homeownership Widens In U.S. Slump : NPR)

Graphic Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Graphic Credit: Alyson Hurt/NPR